Does Mark Sanford fully appreciate what Michael Jackson has done for him? I doubt it.
Of course, national interest in our gov was waning yesterday afternoon anyway. Lachlan Cartwright, who spent the day chasing around Sullivan’s Island yesterday for the New York Post, told me that right after the governor came out of the house and spoke to him and other media a little after 4:30.
But the confirmation came at 7:18 p.m. with this e-mail from the Post, which I will always treasure:
Hi Brad, We won’t be needing anyone tomorrow in Columbia. The King of Pop is dead.
Says it all, doesn’t it?
I also enjoyed this postscript in the form of a text message from Lachlan this morning:
Thanks for your help yday My phone died when we were chatting Im now on a flight to LA for Jacko so think we are done with the Gov…for now but do keep in touch with another Aussie
… followed by his e-mail address. Working with Lachlan was a blast. He’s all that you expect with a top reporter with a Rupert Murdoch paper, right down to the heavy Australian accent. The reference to “another Aussie” arises from the fact that I had been communicating with Peter Beattie, former P.M. of Queensland, earlier in the day on something unrelated. That caused me to mention to Lachlan that I had just been in touch with Beattie, which made me wonder whether he — Lachlan — hailed from Queensland.
No, he said — Melbourne. I apologized for any offense I might have given by incorrectly pegging his accent, to which he replied “No its cool Ive lived the last 5yrs in london anyways.” (He didn’t say it that time, but another time during the day, he actually said “no wurries.”)
This — and the fact that today he’s at Neverland — gives me the impression that Lachlan must be the Post‘s “on the spot while it’s hot” guy, always traveling to the hottest story in the world. Which sounds pretty exciting to a homebody like me. I once had a job like that on a much, much smaller scale — for a year, from 1979-80, I was freed up from all beat responsibilities to work on special assignments for The Jackson (TN) Sun, from Nashville to Memphis to the Iowa caucuses. Little papers used to do things big in those days, when newspapers actually had travel budgets.
But certainly nothing like Lachlan’s job. You journalism snobs out there may sneer at the Post and its ilk, but let me tell you they’ve got a business model that’s worthy of some respect — they go out and cover what the people want to know about, from moment to moment. They’re newshounds. They ride the hot horse, as a former editor of mine would put it.
And in that way, working for them for a couple of days, they helped me hark back to an earlier, more vital, more engaged time in the newspaper business. Used to be, we all had that sort of energy and immediacy. This week, even the good old staid State‘s got it.
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Speaking of The State, I hear that my former colleague, Executive Editor Mark Lett, will have a column Sunday explaining the newspaper’s decision to run the “Maria” e-mails. I can’t remember the last time Mark did that, so this is pretty extraordinary…
“You journalism snobs out there may sneer at the Post and its ilk”
Are you not now too perhaps part now a part of the ilk, spreading your ilknessnish (ilkeshnish?) (ilkington?) far and wide. Is not your pay their derision, your pension their silent scorn.
I can see the future ilkish headlines now.
“MULLER TO ET AL. DROP DEAD”
“WHO’S A BUD?”
“BRAD’S HOT HORSE MCLACHLAN BROUGHT BACK FROM STUD”
“LETT’S RUN THE BENE-CHAPUL EMAILS”
“WIFELESS GOVERNOR FOUND IN SEXLESS MARRIAGE”
“ALL IN KNOTS; EVERYTHING ISN’T SO JAKE IN THE STATEHOUSE”
Will Mark Lett tell us who supplied The State with those e-mails?
Will Mark Lett reveal what other illicit computer data The State has in its possession?
Lee, I don’t think anyone at The State knows where the e-mails came from — which is why you didn’t see them before the governor himself confirmed that there was fire at the source of that smoke…
One of the first rules in journalism — know who your source is!
Lee,
If it was on a state computer, it might well have been FOIA-able–emails are not very privileged, and not very secure. The “illicit” part is questionable.
Brad–If you’re a journalist, and Mark Letts is a journalist, aren’t you still colleagues even if you don’t work for the same employer? I consider all attorneys to be colleagues of mine. My husband considers fellow computer science professors colleagues whether or not they are at USC.
I will be interested to hear what he has to say. At this point it seems like a crass, indefensible ploy to sell newspapers.
Mrs. Fenner,
1. We don’t know yet if these emails were on a state computer or a commercial mail server, if it was a work account or a personal account.
2. THE STATE editors have a return address for any anonymous sources.
3. An anonymous source isn’t credible unless you know who it is, or have independent verification of the information.
A lot of private computer engineers don’t consider academic “computer scientists” as colleagues, because they don’t do that much real research work, don’t practice or teach proper software engineering techniques, don’t know computer hardware, and contribute to the decline of the industrial base by importing foreign students and foreign workers.
USC does not teach any courses on network security or computer networking for those in Columbia you have to go to Midland’s Tech or one of the other certified learning centers.
I’ve been told by a reliable source that the e-mail message were not on his SC provided e-mail account. That they were in fact, his “home” personal e-mail account. At this point, it’s an identical situation to the one Gov. Sarah Palin experienced when her e-mail account was hacked. If/When the FBI gets involved we’ll probably know shortly who sent those e-mail messages to The State and who and where the person was when he hacked into Sanford’s e-mail account. It’s nearly impossible to erase the electronic trail… you can spoof, but for IT forensic experts, they know how to get around those too. It’s only a matter of time before we know who is responsible.
It’s not necessary to have “computer-hacking skills” (which were among the skill Napoleon Dynamite valued) to have had access to these e-mails — even sent from a personal account.
There are rumors — but just rumors — about a pretty plausible scenario that doesn’t involve any Mission Impossible stuff at all. It covers motive as well. I’ll be interested to see if things turn out that way, but I really have no idea.
I’ll tell you this much, though — whenever anybody who knows the players tries to work out who it is, there’s one person they all agree it couldn’t have been, and that’s the First Lady. Far too classy (she’s the one person in this drama that I fully respect and admire more than anyone now), and her motives are to protect her family, not to cause this sort of sensation. So you count her out, and you’re left with the other six billion people on the planet.
I’ve pursued lines of questioning on this — looking for instance at the MANY former staffers (Sanford has gone through them pretty quickly) — but gotten nowhere. Everybody’s just offering wild speculation.
Even the “journalists” are mostly offering wild speculation.
Whether something is a crime does not depend upon the difficulty of commission.
A burglary is a burglary, whether it is a cat burglar scaling five floors up the outside of a building, a drug addict tossing a brick through a window, or some punk just trying doors until he finds one unlocked. When you break the seal, you have committed “breaking”, and when you step across the threshold, you have committed “entering”.
The same is true with e-mails that do not belong to you, or a phone call you record. Crude methods are not a defense.
“I’ll tell you this much, though — whenever anybody who knows the players tries to work out who it is, there’s one person they all agree it couldn’t have been, and that’s the First Lady. Far too classy (she’s the one person in this drama that I fully respect and admire more than anyone now), and her motives are to protect her family, not to cause this sort of sensation.”
Brad, this is one of the primary reasons you failed in your career. You form a viewpoint, seek out or make up authorities to support your viewpoint, and ignore facts or close off avenues of inquiry might elicit facts that don’t support your viewpoint. The only way it’s impossible for a human being to have done something is if it’s really impossible. Human beings have all kinds of feelings and motivations, they will do things you wouldn’t even begin to imagine they would do. The fact that you don’t want to look down a particular road doesn’t mean that road doesn’t go somewhere.
I don’t know who leaked the emails. I don’t think it was Mrs. Sanford. But it’s certainly not impossible, and for her to have done it doesn’t even conflict with the qualities you ascribe to her.
You hung on as a journalist as long as you did because your job was to follow a storyline and suppress facts that conflicted with it. But if you’re going to succeed as a blogger, you have to follow facts where they lead, and accept the possibility that they may lead in directions you don’t expect.
Sick fantasies you have going there, Mike.
Mike seems to have reading comprehension problems. I said that every source — every CREDIBLE source, people who know the Sanfords better than I and far better than Mike ever will — said it couldn’t be Mrs. Sanford. And, like Mike, I don’t THINK it’s her either.
But as I say, count her out, and you’re no closer to knowing which of the other six billion people in the world it might be.
As I also indicated, some of those same sources are advancing a credible theory as to who it was, and that individual MAY have had opportunity and motive. Of course, I’ve also heard arguments against that theory, and I’m not going to repeat it until I see more than conjecture. By the way, I have not seen this person mentioned as a suspect in writing, although the idea could have appeared somewhere and I’ve missed it.
By the way, while some of you are operating on the idea that these e-mails were somehow obtained illegitimately, you are ignoring the fact that multiple people could have had legitimate, legal access to them. E-mail just isn’t as private as some people think.
Anyway, one of those people forwarded the e-mails anonymously to the paper.
The New York Times has news on who could have possibly leaked the emails.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/27maria.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Apparently, the email was leaked by an Argentine man that briefly dated SC Governot Mark Sanford’s mistress.
Argentina and South America have different computer and privacy laws than the United States and the individual states. Internet Service Providers in South America cannot take any action to suspend or cancel their customers.
I set up a spam filter to block and bounce all emails from any email server in the address space, 200.0.0.0-201.255.255.255 (200.0.0.0/7).
I remain dumbfounded that Sanford actually sent the emails, knowing – as I’m sure he does – that email privacy is tenuous at best, especially for public figures.
If anyone is going to do anything illicit, what mental impairment would cause him/her to leave a record of it??
Public figures have the same rights to “security in their personal papers and effects” as any other person. You cannot wiretap the phones, hijack the e-mails, or read the mail of any other person.
Don’t you think Gordon Liddy would have tried that defense, if it were possible?
“It was okay for us to wiretap the DNC headquarters, because they were public figures.” Yeah, right.
Brad, my point wasn’t about what was or wasn’t true in this particular case, it is that your approach illustrates how you failed in your career. The fact that you can appeal to some unnamed authorities to establish the proposition that Mrs. Sanford couldn’t have leaked the emails isn’t important, because appealing to authorities isn’t how we find out the truth. We find out the truth by finding out facts and analyzing the facts. It wasn’t impossible for Mrs. Sanford to have leaked the tapes. Her classiness, and her desire to protect her family don’t really affect the analysis. I don’t think exposure of wrongdoing is low-class, and exposure of her husband’s wrongdoing could be a reasonable way to protect her family.
I’m not sure you, or the people you talked to, really understand the meaning of the word “impossible”. It was impossible for William Shakespeare to have leaked the emails. It was not impossible for Mrs. Sanford to have leaked the emails.
Now, a more worthwhile analysis might have been something like this:
Mrs. Sanford has, over the last several months, during a period occurring AFTER the emails were leaked, worked privately with her husband to persuade him to end the affair. She was aware of what was an was not published in the State newspaper, and the emails were not published. Her behavior has not been consistent with that of someone who leaked the emails, if she leaked the emails, why didn’t she push the State to break the story.
You figure things out by figuring them out, by looking at what actually happens, not by deciding what you want to believe and then looking for an authority to support your belief. You figure out what human beings can and can’t do by looking at their behavior in a particular case, not by declaring yourself or someone else an expert on their behavior and making blanket declarations.
Again, blogging is hard, much harder than your job as a journalist, and you failed as a journalist. Don’t approach blogging in the same way that led to your failure as a journalist and expect a different result.
I just read The State’s explanation of why they ran the story about the e-mail messages. This article was probably the most one-sided article I’ve ever written in this newspaper.
I wish The State would put this much effort into digging into Jake Knott’s background, if they did I might actually renew my subscription…. or at least buy a single copy. Jake Knotts was a dirty cop, now he’s a dirty Senator. Nice press conference by the way Jake, it reminded me of a 3rd grader giving an oral book report on a book he didn’t read. How does Jake make his money, is he really making this much off his state retirement and $14,000 as a legislator? But they better do it before Christmas, because I’m hearing that that is their projection to be shut down unless something drastic happens financially. Seeing what The State is reporting these days, I don’t know if I could ask for a better Christmas present.
I wish journalists would put half this much effort into trying to find a genuine birth certificate for Barack Obama.
A few private minutes worth of a $9,000 official state commerce junket has them all in a rage, but $200,000,000 of campaign donations to Obama from Arab countries doesn’t matter to them.
Lee, as the Mayor of Crazytown, why don’t you have a Crazytown police detective look into the birth certificate issue?
Mike, why do you not care if your President is qualified to hold office?
You can’t produce his citizenship papers, no one else can, and Obama has a team of attorneys fighting to keep his citizenhip papers, name change papers, passports, and college transcripts under seal.
He is hiding something, for a reason.
Brad, why exactly are you a “failed journalist”? Is it because you were an editor and not a reporter with the State? Is it because you endorsed McCain over Obama even after your explanation of why you liked both candidates? Is it because you were caught up in a cost reduction measure and lost your job? Why are a few of your most severe critics some of the most prolific posters on your blog? What is this obsession over your career with some to the point of OCD behavior?
I can understand some criticism because reporters who become editors eventually lose contact with the “street” and seldom, if ever, get involved with the actual footwork it takes to track down and follow a story in the field.
One of your most vociferious critics is “Mike Toreno”, who, by the way, is a fictional character from the video game, “Grand Theft Auto” and the character operates under dubious and highly flexible moral certitudes.
Lee, I understand you ran as a write-in candidate but were defeated in the election for Mayor of Crazytown (Washington, DC) and the eventual winner was Adrian Fenty. Maybe he can initiate an investigation. I wouldn’t count in it though.
Bart Rogers, I understand why you feel compelled to fabricate tales about me, with your deep frustration at being unable to discuss the issues I raise. Maybe Obama-Care will cover counseling, but don’t wait on it.
OK, I get it now. “Mike Toreno.” OK. Well, we’ve seen him before under other guises, haven’t we?
O.K Lee, just gently remove your fingers from the keyboard, step back from the comuter and remain calm. There is nothing to be afraid of. No need to fure your computer in anger again. My comments were meant to be a sardonic, humorous reply to the Toreno dig, not an attack against you. So, move to a neutral corner, take a couple of deep breaths, and let a fresh supply of oxgyen flow to the brain. This is Bart. I decided to start using my last name since I find it increasingly dishonest to post without it. Remember, on many points, I am in agreement with you, not against you.
Feel better now? Repeat after me. Not everyone is after me. Not everyone is after me. Not everyone is after me.
Birch, now I know how you felt whin I took your comments the wrong way. Justice is served on the blog once again.
“computer”, “comuter” – sorry
Bart, Brad is a failed journalist because he failed to adjust to the new reality. Matthew Yglesias has been discussing how varous sectors of the economy are becoming very low cost or free, and he makes this observation:
“Once upon a time, a media business—whether it charged a nominal price for content (newspaper) or not (broadcast television)—could take advantage of massive barriers to entry to generate monopoly rents.”
Now, neither Brad, nor most journalists, understood that their business was based solely on massive barriers to entry, and journalists came to believe that they performed an important public service, and that this service could not be performed by others because those others lacked the ability to perform the same service. Of course, as we saw once the barriers were taken down, many, many others can do a much better job than Brad. But Brad didn’t understand, and still doesn’t understand, plenty of others can do the same job Brad can do, and can do it a lot better. Brad discounts the people who do better work than he does, because they don’t have credentials. He didn’t unders tand, and doesn’t understand, that in a world without barriers to entry, credentials are meaningless.
Brad isn’t the most prominent example of this failure of understanding, certainly. One particularly egregious example was seen last week and this weekend, when Dana Milbank complained because Nico Pitney was allowed to ask a question at a presidential press conference, and President Obama alerted Pitney beforehand that he might get a question. To Milbank, the right to ask questions comes from credentials, from working for a corporation, and there is something wrong with the president receiving a question from someone whose only claim to recognition arises from his superior work.
But now Brad doesn’t even have any credentials. Yet he still maintains the same self-important attitude. He needs to lose the attitude, recognize that he doesn’t have a monopoly position, and try to start providing value.